Submitted by I would like to thank osnews user fran for submitting this as-is; a quick round up of other news happenings this week that OSNews missed. Read More for “Red Hat’s ‘Obfuscated’ Kernel Source”, “LibreOffice Enterprise Support From Novell”, “Microsoft Want You to Stop Using IE6”, “Facebook Can Screw With Google, But Google Can’t Screw With Facebook” and lastly “Thom Has Three PS3s, Whereas You, Conversely, Have None”.
Red Hat’s “Obfuscated” Kernel Source
A bit of controversy in the Linux community. Red Hat has decided to make some policy changes in the way it distribute RHEL updates. The issue is regarding their decision to ship patches of RHEL pre-applied without details of those patches explicitly listed. Some sites are debating whether Red Hat will be violating GPL with this decision.
Red Hats’s CTO has responded in a blog post with a “Commitment to Open†and with the reasoning behind this decision, which can be summed up as a survivalist move in the face of increased competition from other companies.
LibreOffice Enterprise Support From Novell
Novel has released a commercially supported version of Libre Office. Headlining the overview page read “LibreOffice is the successor to OpenOffice.org Novell Editionâ€. Novel is, on the face of it, thus dropping Open Office in favour of Libre Office.
The company claims 50-60 percent saving over a three year period compared to some other products and pricing lists as starting at US$120 per device per year for enterprise class support.
One puzzling detail (from their system prerequisites) is that this product does not include the option of running LibreOffice on Linux. The system requirements only include Windows as the requisite operating system.
Microsoft Want You to Stop Using IE6
Microsoft has released an Internet explorer 6 countdown site in an attempt to persuade IE6 users to upgrade. Usage of IE6 is still at a high 12% and the company is pushing towards lowering this to below 1%. This site, called ie6coundown.com list some interesting statistics. In China for instance IE6 still has a huge usage percentage of 34.5%.
Kroc: Whilst Microsoft’s heart may be in the right place, their mind isn’t. They recommend IE6 users upgrade to the latest IE, but IE9 is not available on XP… so they are saying that IE6 users should support a modern web by upgrading to IE8—a two year old browser, without HTML5 support and very soon to be obsoleted by IE9, not available to IE6 users. Great, just great. Nice going Microsoft. Why can’t you just come out and admit it: you are in a deep, deep hole and it is in the interest of your XP-using customers to switch away from IE.
Facebook Can Screw With Google, But Google Can’t Screw With Facebook
Google’s Adsense adverts are no longer allowed on Facebook. As of the end of February Adsense has been taken off the list of allowed add providers. Adsense is one of Google’s biggest revenue streams and this decision will hurt it financially. The company however is not the only ones with
many developers crying foul over this decision.
Kroc: This isn’t about advertising, it’s about data. Facebook are paranoid that adsense ads will act as ‘tendrils’ into Facbook’s property, allowing Google to extract data from within the silo.
Thom Has Three PS3s, Whereas You, Conversely, Have None
Due to a legal dispute between LG and Sony, shipments of PS3’s via Netherland ports to Europe has been halted and existing shipments seized . LG filed for legal action against Sony in the Netherlands and a Dutch judge there granted a preliminary injunction against Sony. The case involves seven separate patent disputes. The most notably of which involve Blu-Ray.
That is SO not me in that video.
One, I have way more taste when it comes to interior decoration.
Two, I am prettier.
Three, my beard is way more epic.
Four, I have far better and more sophisticated taste in clothing (since I’m European).
Five, I don’t have a PS3. I have a pink PS2.
Wait…
Edited 2011-03-06 11:22 UTC
Still no mentioning of the GNOME3 development decision that minimize and maximize buttons will be gone? I know it is in the submissions, I was even going to write about it myself.
Working on it.
It’s a pity about gnome’s plan on this.
When working I regularly split my screen into two window sections. I can then maximise one screen when I want to and afterwards press minimise again it will perfectly allign 50/50 like i set it up initially.
With gnome 3 I’ll probably have to this manually everytime buy dragging borders thus wasting time.
Edited 2011-03-06 15:41 UTC
As much as I am excited about X/HTML 5, I have to disagree with the comment about Internet Explorer 9 not being supported PCs.
Internet Explorer 8 is perfectly fine for browsing by most users, and banging on about how it not coming to XP is a non-issue.
Windows XP is a ten year old Operating system, I certainly never expected to have IE7 for Windows NT4.0 or Windows 98 (approximately the same time period).
Also outside of a corporate environment this is really a non-issue. Users that really want the benefits of HTML 5 and associated technologies can always install an alternative browser and let’s face it … those who know what HTML 5 is are already running something other than Internet Explorer.
Edited 2011-03-06 20:00 UTC
Thom it’s good to see the Netherlands as a bastion of patent rights enforcement.
Seriously..I wondered if there is more to it why LG chose the Netherlands as it’s venue for this case. Maybe it’s more than Netherlands being a very important port of entry for most of imported European goods.
They probably took into consideration the huge amount of electronic patents Philips hold with it’s corresponding licensing and royalty consequences with foreign companies.
If a court in the netherlands dont respect LG patent rights, wil other countries respect Philips patent rights if they bring forward such a case?
If this case where dismissed South Korea might feel it can do the same regarding Philips patents.
The Netherlands thus is good choice to seek litigation on electronic patents with the big port of entry factor to boot.
Are there any XP users left?